You're standing in front of a painting — in a museum, on Pinterest, in a relative's living room — and you have no idea who painted it or when. No wall label, no signature you can read, nothing. But you can still figure out roughly what it is, because every art movement leaves behind visual fingerprints. Brushwork, color, subject matter, and composition all change in fairly predictable ways from one period to the next, and once you know what to look for, you can place most paintings within a few decades without ever looking up the artist.

This guide gives you a simple, repeatable method for doing exactly that — plus a quick-reference identification guide to twelve of the most common art movements you're likely to run into, from the Renaissance all the way through Surrealism.